Welcome to the very first Artisan Cutlery / CJRB blog! My name is Russell and I’m the over-energetic US-representative for Artisan Cutlery and our sub-band CJRB. If you are not familiar with what we do here, we area US based company that makes knives in conjunction with an outstanding factory team in Yangjiang China. As of 2021 we’ve been in operation for almost 4 years making a wide range of products from the budget friendly CJRB line designed for people who need a reliable knife to get work done on a daily basis, to extravagant Ti-Damascus and Damascus steel knives that will absolutely add some flash and class to your carry we’ve done our best to offer a diverse catalogue with something to fit everyone’s taste! So, that’s what we do, and we’re proud of our knives but as the EDC world expands and the average knife user starts to learn about steel quality, popular materials, and when the next limited-edition model with some all new supersteel is going to drop, where does a company like Artisan fit in?
Let’s start by stating an unpopular opinion. There is NO PERFECT EDC knife, there has never been and never will be, in the endless quest to find the perfect balance of design, materials, cost, and accessibility there just isn’t any way to balance all of those and keep everyone happy, there’s just the endless game of trying to make that perfect/iconic model that every Youtube reviewer ends up using for size comparisons when showing off the newest knife of the moment. As a production company we can try to fight against the tide and put out product after product with the same features in an attempt to nail down exactly what the knife community at large wants at the moment or, but that’s just now what we wanted to do. From the beginning Artisan has been dedicated to being experimental and thinking a bit outside of the box with our designs. Some of our earliest models are downright bizarre, but I can’t help but feel that this industry needs a little bit of that. Designs that are way outside of the norm may not always sell the best but they keep the industry’s collective imagination flowing. For instance, our Kinetic series of knives/tools came from the most outlandish idea possible, a button-actuated automatic knife that also functioned as a full-sized butterfly knife. The prototype was one of the wildest, most mind-bending things I’ve ever seen and it was awesome, but also, it was obviously something that took a little out-of-the-box thinking to accomplish. In the end my final thoughts around the original Kinetic prototype were often “who would want to buy this, and what would they use it for?” and the answer was pretty simple, “anyone who thinks that this is cool”. I think that’s one of the most important thing about the Every Day Carry community, they like what they like. Sure, there are always going to be things that are trendy in the moment but we want to build a catalogue of products that resonate with people that just enjoy knives that are a little different.
So, this brings me to my biggest point, your EDC knives should make you happy first and foremost! Some of us love the joy that comes from carrying the hottest thing on the market, some of us are focused on function first before anything else, some of us have a very specific style of knife that they gravitate towards, sometimes it’s all about the name and the maker, and sometimes it’s just all about the WOW factor. Whatever your style of EDC is the design team at Artisan wants to make something that our love, maybe some people won’t be into every single model that we offer and that’s ok, variety is key and we want to make sure that we have options for every taste, and that’s why we do what we do! We want our customers to see something made by us and go “whoa, that’s exactly what I need”.
Signing out!
-Russell